LGBTs Are Out to Rape Their Children: GOP Fear-Mongering Descends Upon Texas

On June 7, 1977, voters in Miami’s Dade County flocked to the polls to vote on a simple gay nondiscrimination ordinance previously passed by the county commission. The results of the special election were stunning: Voters had repealed the law by a more than 2-to-1 margin, delivering an overwhelming victory to Anita Bryant, the most prominent campaigner in the repeal effort. In an infamous speech against the law, Bryant declared that “no one has a human right to corrupt our children” and said she was refusing to “yield to this insidious attack” on “parents and their rights to protect their children.” The name of Bryant’s antigay campaign succinctly captured the crux of her credo. It was “save our children.”

On November 3, 2015, voters in Houston flocked to the polls to vote on a simple civil rights ordinance — which covered 15 different classes, including trans people — previously passed by the city council. The results were overwhelming: With double the average voter turnout, Houstonians voted to repeal the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance by a 22% margin...“in the interest of our children and our families.”

It’s no surprise that antigay and anti-trans campaigns have both focused extensively on children: One extremely effective way to align voters against LGBT rights is to convince them that LGBTs are out to rape their children...

...anti-HERO activists fixated on children is both revealing and predictable. On a literal level, the campaign implied that trans people (or “gender-confused men”) would, once given legal cover, assault women and children in bathrooms (never mind that any such assault was already illegal). But behind this hysteria lay a more complex anxiety...

Soon after HERO’s defeat was clear, virulent conservative commentator Erick Erickson wrote that “Christians and common sense won” while “perverts, the mentally ill, and the gay rights mob lost.”...